The Influence of Politicians’ Sex on Political Budget Cycles: An Empirical Analysis of Spanish Municipalities

Israel Garcia () and Bernd Hayo
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Israel Garcia: University of Marburg

MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: Does a politician’s sex influence political budget cycles (PBCs)? We answer this question using a sample of Spanish municipalities from the Madrid region for the period 2010−2019. The Madrid region has a homogenous set of budget rules that allows consistently categorising budget expenditure items as either ‘mandatory’ or ‘non-mandatory’ public services. After differentiating between smaller and larger municipalities, gender influence is studied along two dimensions: mayor’s sex and share of women in government. Our findings include, in regard to mandatory spending in smaller municipalities, that gender-balanced governments induce PBCs. In larger municipalities, when the share of women in government is above 60%, electoral spending is increased by up to 10% of an average municipal budget for mandatory spending, and up to 2.2% for non-mandatory. These findings are generally supported in a mixed-gender close election analysis.

Keywords: Gender; Political budget cycles; Signalling mechanism; Local politicians; Fiscal policy; Spanish municipalities; Madrid region (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D72 E62 H72 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:202223

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